Transformation
of the Army to a capabilities-based force that can respond immediately to any
global threat cannot occur without first transforming the logistics systems that
have been used since World War II.

Although
not as popular or as widely studied as tactics, logistics has been the key to
every major conflict since the dawn of modern warfare.World War II provided the backdrop for the biggest logistics operation
ever attempted.The D-Day landing and force buildup alone
involved millions of tons of supplies, thousands of ships, and hundreds of thousands
of personnel.To carry out this massive
logistics operation, planners used supply point and throughput resupply operations,
which involve stockpiling supplies at depots in the rear, transporting them to
forward depots, and moving them to the units.

The
logistics buildup in Kuwait before the invasion of Iraq this spring was reminiscent
of the logistics techniques used by First U.S. Army in World War II and repeated
in the Korean War and the Gulf War of 1991.This article will look at the First Army's
logistics buildup and sustainment operation from D-Day through its race across
France into Germany and at current and future battlefield logistics.It also will examine the validity of moving from a supply-based logistics
operation to the real-time logistics operation proposed in the Army Transformation.

Gearing
Up for War

Preparations for the World War II invasion of France began 2 years before
the actual operation.From January
1942 to June 1944, the United States shipped over 17 million tons of cargo to
the United Kingdom.Included in the
shipments was everything from general supplies and equipment to 800,000 pints
of blood plasma, 125 million maps, prefabricated harbors (known as Mulberries),
a replacement rail network, cigarettes, and toothbrushes.

The
invasion operation divided the Allied forces into five task forcesthree
British and two American.The invasion
forces landed on 6 June 1944 at five beaches in Normandy:Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno, and Sword.At Omaha and Utah, the two American beaches, only 6,614 of the planned
24,850 tons of cargo were discharged in the first 3 days, which is indicative
of the difficulties the Americans experienced in beach resupply operations.

The 12
quartermaster units that arrived with the assault forces provided everything from
general supplies to transportation to graves registration.Although the Americans took several days
to link up with the British forces, it was quite apparent by 7 June that the invasion
was a success.Once the landing forces
secured the beaches of Normandy, they had to organize to receive the supplies,
equipment, and troops needed to sustain the invasion forces.

Shipments
of supplies to the United Kingdom for the Normandy invasion not only had to compete
with other combat operations in the European theater but also were restricted
by the amount of supplies British ports could handle.By December 1943, steady shipments of
supplies were flowing into the United Kingdom.By July 1944, more than two million tons had been shipped to
the United Kingdom, which taxed the capability of the port facilities to hold
and process the supplies.Supplies
and equipment bound for France could not be discharged quickly enough to accommodate
the new supplies, so a logjam developed.

Docking
facilities were critical to the quick discharge of
supplies and equipment in France.Mulberries were used to receive the tons
of supplies and equipment needed to keep the invasion force moving forward.When the quantity of supplies coming in exceeded the number of Mulberries
available, the remaining supplies were offloaded
using logistics over-the-shore operations.

As the supply operation matured, 56,200 tons of supplies, 20,000 vehicles,
and 180,000 troops were discharged each day at Omaha and Utah beaches.That was slightly less than half of the
supplies, nearly two-thirds of the vehicles, and all of the troops that had been
projected for offload each day.Performance
on the American beaches improved rapidly as a more favorable tactical situation
developed and, by 11 June 1944, all of the area up
to the Aure River was under V Corps control.Until the securing of fixed port facilities at Cherbourg, Le Havre, Rouen,
and Antwerp, Belgium, resupply and staging operations
consisted entirely of Mulberries and logistics over-the-shore operations.

By
the end of June, over 289,827 tons of supplies had been offloaded onto the Normandy
beaches.However, shortages still
occurred because supplies could not be discharged from British ports quickly enough
and ships could not be turned around fast enough to keep up with the requirements
of the landing forces.Therefore, by 15 June, supplies were being shipped directly
to Normandy from the United States.At
Normandy, supplies were stockpiled on the docks and beaches and then moved to
forward units by truck.

The
longer it took U.S. forces to secure the port of Cherbourg, the more supplies,
equipment, and troops piled up on the beaches waiting to be trucked forward.In early August, the port at Cherbourg was cleared and opened so large
quantities of supplies and equipment (more than 20,000 tons a day) could be loaded
and moved forward by truck and rail.General
William Whipple, Jr., USA (Ret.), former Chief of the Logistics Branch, G4,
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, wrote in a 16 May 1967 letter
to Brigadier General Eugene A. Salet, Commandant of the Army War College

Up to September, U.S. forces were supported largely across
the beaches, but the U.S. beaches were known to be substantially unusable after
1 October on account of the weather.U.S. had the port of Cherbourg, which
could handle about 20,000 tons a day; but this was inadequate, and was a long
way from the front.Ports of Le Havre,
Rouen, etc. . . . were so damaged as to be largely unusable, and such channel
ports as were available had to be reserved with first priority for British use.

Port
discharge problems led the way for the second major logistics problem in the logistics
of invasionmoving supplies from the port to the front-line troops.

Soldiers load some of the approximately 20 million 5-gallon
cans that were used to refuel vehicles during World War II.

Logistics
on the Move

Once U.S. and
British forces broke out of the hedgerow country and began to race across open
terrain, supply lines lengthened and resupply became more difficult.Allied commanders were frustrated because logistics transportation constraints
prevented them from taking advantage of a favorable tactical situation.In August and September of 1944, supply forces set up a ground
and air logistics express system to move food, fuel, ammunition, barrier materials,
medical supplies, and equipment to forward units quickly by air, rail, and roads.Petroleum and ammunition accounted for half of the daily supply requirements.

Aerial
resupply was useful for supporting airborne operations and emergency resupply
operations, but most supplies were moved by truck and rail.As the war progressed, aerial resupply
improved remarkably, as did road and rail transportation.However, resupply by air dropped off dramatically
following the emergency missions to supply the 500,000 Americans participating
in the Ardennes counteroffensive.After February and March 1945, air transport was used mainly
for medical and petroleum resupply.

In both First and Third Armies, the resupply requirements far exceeded
the ability of the transportation network to move supplies forward.In fact, by the end of August 1944, 90
to 95 percent of all supplies were still in Normandy beach depots nearly 300 miles
from the forward units.To deal with
these operational supply shortfalls, logisticians set up a priority system based
on the amount of supplies that could be hauled by truck and rail instead of which
army had priority.

Fuel
Shortages

Petroleum is
the lifeblood of a mechanized army.By
mid-September 1944, First and Third Armies were experiencing critical fuel problems,
not because of a lack of fuel at the ports and beachheads but because of a shortage
of transportation to move the fuel.To help solve the problem, the Allies
built a pipeline to move the petroleum 140 miles forward from the beach-head
and port of Cherbourg.Once fuel reached the end of the pipeline, trucks moved it
to forward supply bases.However,
by 9 September, daily consumption outstripped daily
receipts as Allied forces moved forward.Planned consumption was significantly underestimated, and units consumed
the fuel as soon as it got to the front line.The increase in consumption rates and the lack of truck transportation
were the largest contributors to the petroleum shortages.Nevertheless, fuel shortages accounted for only half of the critical shortages
in the European theater.Ammunition
was the other half.

Ammunition Shortfalls

Ammunition
is the hardest supply to push on the battlefield because of its various types
and different configurations.Ammunition
arrives in theater in bulk and is broken down and loaded on trucks in configurations
that maximize the space available.Problems such as a shortage of trucks,
disputes over consumption rates, artillery round shortages, and production rates
in the United States that couldn't keep up with demand, compounded the usual challenges
of ammunition resupply.

By
mid-September, Allied forces faced serious shortages and began rationing 155-millimeter
howitzer and 81-millimeter mortar ammunition to the combat forces.As the war progressed, artillery expenditure rates changed from one army
to the next and from one battle to the next.This made it difficult to predict the required supply rate.The Army eventually solved this problem by establishing a required
supply rate and a combat supply rate.The required supply rate was the amount of ammunition a commander
expected to need for a particular combat operation, while the combat supply rate
was the amount of ammunition the supply system could support.

Other
Supply Deficits

Although
providing food, water, construction materials, and clothing to forward troops
was less difficult in World War II than providing petroleum and ammunition, logisticians
still faced some challenges with sustainment.Providing hot "chow" to forward
units was time consuming, and it was difficult to serve units on the move.However, hot food was as big a morale boost for combat forces then as it
is now.

Limited transportation made it difficult to move barrier materials to the
front.It was hard to justify moving construction
materials when there was not enough transportation available to move ammunition
or fuel.

Clothing challenges involved everything from design and development to
production problems to transportation shortages.Distribution of winter uniforms to the troops was delayed because line
units did not provide the right requisitioning numbers.Winter uniforms were a very low requisitioning
priority until October.By then,
it was too late for every soldier to receive enough winter gear for the cold weather
in December and January.Blanket requisitions did not include the needs of the civilian
population, prisoners of war, and French free forces.There was a deficit of almost a million blankets by the winter
of 1944.

World
War II logistics was a continuous process of initiatives and experimentation to
try to fit the right logistics system with the right circumstances.When logisticians found roadblocks at
the strategic level, they overcame them as quickly as their communication systems
could respond.At the operational
level, logistics initiatives included Mulberries to serve as expedient piers,
pipelines to move fuel, and the "Red Ball Express" to push logistics
to the front lines.A beachhead was
established to accumulate supplies, a series of supply bases was set up along
a 300-mile main supply route, and, simultaneously, air, truck, rail, and pipeline
transportation was used to move supplies across the battlefield.

"Red
Ball Express" was the Army code name for a truck convoy system that stretched
from St. Lo in Normandy to Paris and eventually to the front along France's northeastern
borderland. The route was marked with red balls. The Army Transportation corps
created the huge trucking operation on 21 August 1944. Supply trucks started rolling
on 26 August and continued for 82 days. On an average day, 900 fully loaded vehicles
were on the Red Ball route around the clock, with drivers ordered to observe 60-yard
intervals and a top speed of 25 miles per hour. When the program ended in mid-november
1944, Red Ball Express truckers had delivered 412,193 tons of food, gasoline,
oil, lubricants, ammunition, and other essential supplies.

Timeless
Logistics Lessons

Military
logistics operations in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the
Gulf War employed much of the same methodology:secure a port of debarkation, build up a supply base, and then
push supplies forward by whatever means available.Even today, the commander's first strategy
is typically to build up supplies and combat power over months in a theater of
operations, conduct tactical operations, and then hope that supply lines remain
open and capable of keeping up with the combat forces.However, as any good planner knows, "hope
is not a method."

Transformation
of the logistics structure must begin with the renovation of its systems, including
changes in transportation and maintenance, as well as in the supply of food, water,
fuel, ammunition, and barrier materials.The bottom line is:The military needs to lighten its equipment
and supply loads in order to reduce its logistics tail, cut lift requirements,
and, at the same time, increase force sustainability.

More
Multipurpose Vehicles

The
Army has already begun to reduce the weight of its combat systems by using the
light armored vehicle (LAV) to increase the survivability of the light forces
and increase the maneuverability of the heavy forces with a decrease in fuel consumption.Industry can take the LAV chassis one step further by using it for logistics
vehicles that will replace the wide variety of cargo- and liquid-carrying vehicles
now used.A LAV chassis, enhanced with a 5-ton cargo
bed and a crane for loading and unloading 463L pallets and redesigned to be C130
transportable, is essential.

Today's family of cargo transportation vehicles consists of four distinct
types:dry cargo, wet cargo, perishable cargo,
and ammunition.None of these vehicles
are very fuel-efficient.The newest
versions are complicated to maintain, and several different types of mechanics
are required to maintain them.They do not all have the same load capabilities, and they are
not survivable on the modern battlefield.

If the same medium-weight chassis were used for both cargo vehicles and
combat vehicles, the number of mechanics needed to repair them would be reduced.Such vehicles could keep up with the combat
forces while maintaining a small degree of self-protection.A LAV equipped with a cargo bed or a pallet-mounted
3,000-gallon fuel or water tank could move cargo, fuel, or water anywhere on the
battlefield.This system also could
be equipped with a crew-served weapon that would provide high-volume direct fire
from within the vehicle's cab.

Subsistence
Transformation

Transformation
of rations and the way rations and water are provided would reduce the number
of personnel required to support combat forces, decrease the number of cargo vehicles
needed, and reduce the overall logistics footprint on the battlefield.

The way to redesign
field rations is to combine meals, ready to eat (MREs), tray rations, and unitized
group rations into a "super MRE."The super MRE would be packaged, heated,
and prepared much like the current MREs but would have the nutritional value,
variety, and taste of fresh A rations.

The super
MREs would eliminate the need for cooks, provide forward combat units with hot
meals, and reduce the need for transporting large quantities of rations across
the battlefield.At the same time,
super MREs would ensure that even the soldiers on the most remote part of the
battlefield receive a hot meal.

Water is
another challenge for logisticians.Water
purification and bulk water transportation across the battlefield are difficult
and time consuming.Also, it is difficult
to get water to soldiers in the most remote areas of the theater.

Three concepts for
future water production and transportation could reduce the problems inherent
in water resupply.The first is a
water-production system already in concept development that extracts water from
a vehicle's fuel system, purifies it, and stores it in a separate tank.This not only will increase the fuel efficiency of combat vehicles by removing
wastewater but also will provide forward combat soldiers with water systems in
their individual vehicles.

The
second method of providing water to forward combat units is to equip each squad
with a small, vehicle-mounted reverse-osmosis water purification unit with a 100-
to 200-gallon storage tank.

The
third method is to purchase more hard-wall bulk water tanks that mount on 463L
pallets.Currently, bulk water distribution
is limited to 3,000-gallon water bags hauled on trailers.These bags have to be either full or empty
when hauled and cannot be easily dismounted and recovered.The hard-wall tanks could be filled with
any quantity of water, dropped off anywhere on the battlefield, and picked up
when empty.These tanks, which would
be similar to the new "Hippo" water tank rack system, would provide
more flexible water distribution.Modern
technology could replace the metal tanks with composite plastic tanks, which would
reduce the weight of the tank, minimize mildew buildup, and eliminate rust in
the tank.

Other potential
water innovations range from a personal hydration system to a solar-powered water
chiller-heater that would fit inside a flak jacket.The device's solar-powered motor would
chill water in hot climates and warm water in cold climates to add to the wearer's
comfort and safety.

Liquid
Logistics

Petroleum is
the other "liquid logistics" commodity that puts a huge strain on both
combat forces and logistics forces trying to move it.Until technology can provide a viable
hydrogen-powered engine, petroleum will continue to be the primary fuel for powering
military vehicles.Therefore, military
vehicles must be lighter weight and more fuel efficient.Industry can assist with meeting these
goals by equipping the new generation of combat and combat support vehicles with
a simple-to-maintain battery-fuel combination engine or one that operates on fuel
cells.

Another
innovation for moving fuel on the battlefield is the Load-Handling System (LHS)
Modular Fuel Farm (LMFF).It consists
of ten 2,500-gallon tank racks and one pump rack.Like the Hippos, the LMFF tanks can be
transported when full, partially filled, or empty.By using two tank racksone on the truck and one on the
trailera palletized load system and LHS can transport up to 5,000 gallons
of bulk petroleum per trip.

Bulky Cargo

Barrier
materials such as lumber, sandbags, and barbed wire are a strain on transportation
systems because they are bulky, oversized, and difficult to load.The biggest problem with this type of cargo is that it comes in many different
shapes and sizes, which makes it difficult to establish a standard load for a
cargo vehicle.

The
first step to more efficient resupply of barrier materials is the development
of standard packages that would be used Army-wide.Barrier materials could be broken down and configured into
lettered and numbered sets much like they are in most active-duty combat units.All packages would be assembled and configured for specific purposes, such
as platoon defense, roadblock, or mine emplacement.

These configured and
labeled packages would be shipped from the United States to a theater of operations,
where forward combat forces could order them by citing the appropriate letter
and number of the configuration they need.Preassembled, preconfigured barrier materials
could be brought into the theater quickly.

The LMFF is mobile when full, partically full, or empty, which
decreases its deployment and recovery time.

Building
Better Bullets

The last
class of supply needing transformation is ammunition.The first of two big problems is the many
different kinds of ammunition that are required on the battlefield.Having so many different kinds of ammunition
makes it difficult to provide the correct ammunition during combat.The second problem is determining how
much ammunition to move onto the battlefield without moving too much or too little.Too much would tie up transportation assets, and downloading unneeded ammunition
would be an added burden.A shortage of ammunition would pose a
serious threat to combat units during a fight.

There are many different
sizes and types of ammunition in the U.S. military's inventory.To reduce the overall signature of large-caliber ammunition (above .50
caliber), for example, technology must combine similar caliber ammunition into
a few interchangeable types.For
example, artillery ammunition could be interchangeable with tank and large mortar
ammunition, reducing at least six types of ammunition to one.Missile, rocket, and smaller mortar ammunition could be combined
into another type.A standard conversion
kit could accompany the two types of ammunition so they could be used quickly
for whatever purpose necessary.

The biggest
advantage to a revolution in ammunition development is the reduced need to carry
multiple types of ammunition across the battlefield.Only high-use ammunition would flow on
resupply trucks, and it would stay uploaded until it was needed by combat forces.This would help keep the combat forces supplied and allow them to stay
mobile on the battlefield.The only necessary reconfiguration of
the ammunition would take place at the firing point.

Effective logistics capabilities provide the foundation that combat operators
need to be persistent and decisive.Therefore,
a transformation of combat operations cannot be carried out without first transforming
logistics operations.

As the
current U.S. military moves from a platform-based force to a capabilities-based
force, logistics will play a key role in determining the success or failure of
that transformation.A real logistics transformation will require new equipment,
new planning techniques, and a logistics information architecture that supports
the combat force.

Real-time
information that enables supply requisitioning and tracking from the factory to
the battlefield is critical to the success of any equipment innovations.Without such a system to complement the
capabilities-based equipment, the logistics system will remain a cumbersome supply-based
operation.Real-time information
would eliminate many of the problems experienced during World War II, when it
took months to respond to requisition changes from the front.

As
recent transformations initiatives have stressed, successful capabilities-based
logistics systems must be "sense-and-respond" systems that comprise
two key ingredients:information
and capability.Unfortunately, both
the information architecture and the capabilities-based logistics equipment and
systems needed for logistics transformation are still in the developmental stages.Without both ingredients, combat commanders soon will lose confidence in
the ability of logisticians to provide "just-in-time" logistics and
resort again to building an "Iron Mountain" of materiel as in previous
conflicts. Until a global information
network and a capabilities-based logistics system are implemented and validated,
logistics sustainment will remain a "just-in-case" operation.ALOG

Major
Frederick V. Godfrey is the Brigade S4 Observer-Controller at the Combat
Maneuver Training Center in Hohenfels, Germany.He is a graduate of the Quartermaster Officer Basic and Advanced
Courses and the Air Command and Staff College.He has a bachelor's degree in geography
from Montana State University and a master's degree in military history from Louisiana
State University.